High Brow
by Dropkicking Bullet Shells
Summary: Money cannot purchase what the heart desires. It was Shane's turn to learn that. AU Shane/Daryl


**A/N-** No zombies, same characters, AU  
Written for yes, another story swap with **writerchick0214**!~ I just love doing these things! I always have so much fun writing and coming up with ideas and I always will get a magnificant story from **writerchick0214** out of the mix!  
Last time, I wrote her **Forbidden Fruit**, this time, I write another! Shane/Daryl instead of my usual Rick/Daryl! Expanding my horizons, no?  
The title came from the song Cooler Then Me by Mike Posner. It's not my usual type of music. I don't even like it, but I heard it on the radio when I turned it on the other day, and this way inspired instantly. *Shrug*

**Plot-** Money cannot purchase what the heart desires. It was Shane's turn to learn that. AU Shane/Daryl

**Disclaimer-** I do not own **The Walking Dead**, only the occasional OC that may or may not show up.

**Warnings-** Drugs, violence, drinking, adult themes of a sexual nature, prostitutuion, bribery, language, possible dubcon/noncon, etc.

**Pairing-** Shane/Daryl

XxxX

"The rich are not kind, nor the kind, rich."  
_Unknown_

XxxX

**High Brow-**

Shane Walsh was not really a man of reason. He looked at things simply. When he wanted something, he got it. No questions asked.

It wasn't a matter of money. Shane had enough of that to go around. He had enough of the things that made a man a man. Money, power, looks, pride. He had beautiful woman crawling on their hands and knees for him and he demanded the respect that all of that earned him.

Journalists and paparazzi stalked him and begged him for answers to their many similar questions and just to toy with them he was always vague. He left people craving more than when they came to him.

Damn, it felt good. Shane loved the feeling of using others as puppets, the feeling of making them dance on their petty little strings for his attention. Everyone always bowed to his superiority eventually. Every woman could be bought, every man could be intimidated and every authority figure could be bribed. That was the perfection of humanity, in Shane's eyes. With his own strength, with his own two hands, he ran this city.

New York was beautiful at night. That wasn't much of a surprise.

All the lights glistened in the dark shadowed sky like beautiful little stars and if someone was in the right place at the right time, they could watch the reflections in the city's bay freckle and spear around like fireworks. The many ripples from docked boats or from fish or from something would add to the affect.

There were peers. Long, water logged sets of wood that ran out of the land like a splinter and swayed a bit when someone walked on them like they were walking on water itself.

The few boats docked were magnificent. They stood out from the water and held steady against currents and the few feeble drunks and night owls that swayed in and out of their deep bellies in the late night. Their sails were stripped from their core and their skeletons exposed naked and retched and over used.

The wind kept the water from settling and it rocked the boats against white caps and disturbed the glassy effect just slightly so that it was still perfect and refrained. Less chaotic and more surreal.

Some of the more expensive restaurants and hotels were honored with the ability to view the oceans every day and every night. The views were a short step away from perfect.

Shane sat in his usual spot with his arms slung behind two pretty, busty, blonde beauties. They had similar distant glazed over eyes that were plagued by greed and lust when they watched him. They kept their nimble little knuckles wrapped around their glass of white wine and whichever free hand pressed up against his thighs and needily stroking at the material of his costly suit.

They were cooing nonsense in his ear and Shane had blocked it out long ago. He did not care in the least what these woman had to say to him. They could sit there and babble about the environment or how great he was or their favorite fucking color for all he cared. He wasn't with them for their sense of humor or their intellect or lack there of. He was sitting their with two alluring woman because every man in the restaurant was shooting him zealous glares. They wanted to be him. And that put a smile on Shane's face.

The girl to his right hummed something in a seductive tone. It buzzed and echoed in his ear and Shane tuned in. He knew the words were 'let's head back to your place.' or something along those lines. He had practice in these types of one way conversations.

"Sounds like a plan." Shane smirked his trademark smirk. The girls gleamed up at him with big, dreamy eyes. It kind of turned him off.

Shane slid out off the bench, one woman before him and the other following eagerly after. The men around the room stiffened with jealousy.

He set four one-hundred dollar bills on the table and took off. The girls gaped and giggled playfully at the payment. Too much. Always too much.

The valet slipped his sleek, radiant beast around to the curb to park in front of him on the gum slicked sidewalk. The man got out and passed him the keys, eyes aglow with admiration and Shane saw his lips moving, talking to him, complimenting his car, probably. Shane didn't really listen. He had better things to do.

His car smelled nice. It still had it's new car scent. The girls drabbled about it, murmuring some insignificant praise that was laced with a sexual innuendo that Shane really wasn't listening to.

He turned up his radio and let the sweet notes of classic rock fill his car.

The more petite blonde, the one with the bigger tits, said something in a disapproving tone. Most likely about his taste in music. He shrugged her off and ignored her words, let them run off his back like water, because he did not care. He despised these women and their disgusting pop and lock songs you could really 'bust a move' to.

Shane usually took the long way home, around the park, through the middle of the city, so more people could sit back and admire his car and his money and his looks, but he didn't want to sit in close quarters with these two girls any longer. He wanted to get them to his house and have sex with them so he could make up some excuse and kick them the hell out. He was sick of listening, or really not, to their mumbo jumbo, moving lips. He was going to give himself a stroke if he had to.

His baby crept up on her wheels, purring to a stop at the red light that Shane had never actually been to before. It was only about a mile from his house, but it was the back roads, the sketchy area of town. No one would admire his things here, they would only glare maliciously. Angrily. Painfully.

It was dark in this part of town. All of the streetlights and the big, bold, glowing adds couldn't light this shit hole up and it gave Shane goose bumps, and not the good kind. It was the fastest way home, though.

He was pulled up in the lane closest to the sidewalk. He was making a left. Shane could see the big building that towered over his head and his car just a few feet away. It was rough and textured with its years. There was only one person standing up against its surface.

The man had deep black painted across his eyes and his hair splayed out over his face in a ruffled dirty pattern. With the shadows that danced over him, Shane couldn't tell if it were bruises that rimmed his eyelids or makeup.

He had a slim, easy figure that lay lazily against the brick wall for support. Shane's tinted windows were blocking his view, so he moved a shaky hand over to the control panels on his car door. He listened to the quiet mechanical hum as the window disappeared.

The man against the wall turned to look at him and their gazes met. Shane's subtle brown eyes clashing hard with the stranger's hauntingly blue.

He slipped off the wall and approached Shane's smooth Bentley frame. The man cleared his throat and bent over to get a look at Shane and the girls and he licked his lips with a quick, pink, silver tongue. He spoke with a rusty, silky voice that grated ever so tenderly on Shane's ears and for the first time in a long time, Shane listened to someone speak.

"Ya want somethin'?" the stranger's tone was curious but dull. Like he wanted to know, but he didn't care. He had an accent. Southern. He had probably moved up to the city looking for a job or love or something. The man didn't come off as someone average, someone looking for the simple or the typical. He didn't seem to fit in the category of 'normal'.

This close, Shane could see where bruise actually met make up. The man was wearing eyeliner and eye shadow and there was a big, dark bruise only just hidden behind a layer of cover up. Shane could see it though. He wanted to know where it came from.

Shane licked the roof of his suddenly too dry mouth with his suddenly too dry tongue and he gulped and tried to wet his throat so he could speak. He coughed a bit and shook his head. "No."

"Than go. Tha light's green." the man made a motion with his hands.

Go. A simple command. Shane forgot how to do so. He blinked a bit and watched the stranger stand and adjust his weight from foot to foot. Shane wondered if he was cold. He was wearing a thin, loose hoodie, but it was barely fall and the man was already shivering a bit and biting his lips against the clouds his fresh breath puffed into the air with each exhale. It was always cooler at night, too.

"Aren't you cold?" Shane heard himself ask. He never felt stupid, only misunderstood. Until that moment of course, when the stranger shot him a confused narrowed set of eyes.

"What's it to ya?"

Shane let his eyes roam over the man's busty body and his thin clothing and his exposed skin. Shane pulled out his wallet and fingered out a couple big bills and reached out to hand them over. The man moved without looking at the price and pushed Shane's hand back with his calloused familiar grip. His hands were warm. They had been roasting comfortably in his pockets until that moment and Shane wanted to reach out and push them back in or take them up in his own and keep them at that temperature. Keep them that warm.

"Keep yer money." the stranger shook his head, "I don' need it."

"You certainly need it more than I do." Shane told him, "I have plenty." He flipped the bills over and fanned them out as if the man would change his mind if he saw how much it was. It was probably nearing half a thousand bucks, but Shane had failed to check himself.

The girls said something behind him, but Shane didn't want to hear it, so he didn't. Whatever they could have said to him was absolutely nowhere near as important as this stranger's response.

Shane heard the heater of his car blast a little harder and even that was more important than whatever those girls had said. He reached over without looking and turned it down again and the taller, curvier blond whimpered something in an annoyingly high pitched tone. Probably something about being cold and wanting to get over to Shane's place.

"I'm good thanks." the man told Shane as he turned back and Shane tried to reach out and grab his wrist before he left, but the car and his seatbelt restrained him and he instantly hated them both.

"What?" Shane asked, "You can't be serious!"

The stranger was already ten feet, fifteen feet, twenty feet from the car and walking further. Shane had been listening so intently, trying and straining to hear the man's gritty voice shoot one last thing over his shoulder before he disappeared, that he accidentally heard something the girls were saying.

"Shane, let's just go!" the smaller woman sighed, "I don't want to sit out in this neighborhood any longer. It's creepy."

Shane turned to look at her and took in a deep long breath and let it out slowly. He wanted to blame her so bad for the man not staying and talking or at least looking interested or excepting his money, so he did.

With one swift movement, he reached over and popped the passenger door open, "Get out."

The girls blinked at him and held their breath and then gave out twin huffs of laughter. Shane wasn't joking, though. He pulled his car into park and looked at them with displeasure. He watched and waited as the girls seemed to let his seriousness click and the point got through to them and they slowly, uncertainly stepped out of his car. They waited outside for Shane to laugh and tell them he was kidding but that didn't come.

Shane reached back over, curled his fingers around the handle, shot the blondes a smile, slammed his door closed and drove off.

He looked up in the rear view mirror to watch the two furious girls grow smaller and smaller and fall further behind. He would have wished them well, at the very least, but he didn't really care anymore. Those two woman were just pretty faces in a long long line of pretty faces. But, that man, the one that had just disappeared, was not. He was something else, something foreign.

And, Shane felt something familiar burry itself deep in his belly. A feeling, the same one he felt when he had seen this car for the first time or something shiny or sexy or new. An unused toy.

Want.

Shane wanted that man, because he hadn't looked at him like he was something special. Like everyone else did. He had looked at Shane like he was just somebody else on the street and that rubbed Shane the wrong way. He wanted to find that man and teach him how to respect him because he was Shane fucking Walsh. He would make that man adore him no matter how much money he had to throw at him.

XxxX

**A/N-** So, Shane's a very direct man in this. He knows what he wants.  
I think I'm going to keep these chapter shorter than my usual ones just for the sheer sake of conveniance. I need to finish Dollface and get further into Ghost Town before I throw myself into some indepth story, but I also wanted to start Better Angels and Burn soon, but those'll have to wait. I have another Rick/Daryl project coming your way! It's a very very long one shot, but for good reason. You'll understand if you read it, but it's called Act of Mercy if you end up looking for it.  
Sooo, I got a few plans for this one, and we'll have to wait and see if they work out.  
I hope you guys liked this and you leave a comment on the way out! I can't wait to hear what you guys think!~


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